1834.] 
FALKLAND ISLANDS. 
497 
charge prolDably perceived their drift, and pressed the negotiation 
forward. 
On the eleventh of July he addressed a cool and dispassionate 
note to the minister of foreign affairs, accompanied by an argu- 
ment which embraced, in extenso, all the topics in dispute. 
He commenced by saying, that as the plain inquiry, which he 
had submitted in his note of the twenty-sixth, of June, had not 
been answered, he must take it for granted that the inquiry was 
considered futile, inasmuch as the rights of the Argentine Repub- 
hc to the exclusive fishery at the islands had been asserted in 
the decree of June tenth, eighteen hundred and twenty-nine, and 
in the correspondence betAveen Mr. Slacum, the consul, and Don 
Tomas Manuel de Anchorena, and in the proclamation of the 
fourteenth of February, and in the circular of the delegate 
government in which Vernet was styled the civil and military 
governor of the Falkland Islands, &c. : but inasmuch as the de- 
cree, the proclamation, and the circular had never been commu- 
nicated to his government, and inasmuch as the diplomatic char- 
acter of the consul was positively denied, and his functions sub- 
sequently suspended, " he felt some solicitude to obtain an avov/al 
of the claim made distinctly to himself, as the accredited repre- 
sentative of the United States :" — but as the inquiry had not been 
answered, he should act on the presumption of its having been 
maintained by the Argentine government, and would, therefore, 
lay before the minister the views which his government had taken 
of the questions in issue, which, being well considered, he hoped 
would produce a happy termination of the unpleasant controversy 
which had arisen. Although the Argentine Republic had been 
the aggressors, having first employed force, and therefore it was 
incumbent on them to prove their rights before their justification 
could be made good, yet the charge waved the advantage, and 
undertook to prove — that they had wo such rights. With what 
success remains to be seen. The question was stated by him 
in this manner : 
" The Argentine Republic claims sovereignty and jurisdiction 
over the Falkland Islands, Terra del Fuego, Cape Horn, and 
the islands adjacent in the Atlantic Ocean, by virtue of having 
succeeded to the sovereign rights of Spain over these regions. 
" As these sovereign rights, thus claimed, are altogether deriva- 
- I i 
